We can agree on it in theory but I don't think it was irrefutably demonstrated in Chris' article at all. You can make any early game draw strategy look bad when the deck you're examining has 44 blank cards in it. Of course an early Land Tax looks like shit in a total vacuum, where there isn't an actual deck to exploit the cards being drawn. That's my problem with the analysis; it doesn't definitively prove anything except that Land Tax is really fucking bad when you play it without a strategy to take advantage of it.Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
And let me make this clear: I'm not saying such a strategy exists. I'm simply saying I didn't know whether it did before reading Chris' article, and I still don't after. In short, the content is wholly rhetorical and therefore not compelling to me as a reader.
I would have liked to address this but I don't think I can explain more than I have already.
However, the most important point of my article wasn't to show that Land Tax is not tier 1. I think that is a consequence of the analysis that I performed, and generally fits in with deckbuidling standards in this format, but it is an additional point. The main point is that Land Tax does not deserve to be banned, and if nothing else the scenarios I wrote about show that there just isn't any way for the Land Tax strategy to go broken early in the game.
I really expected players to be a lot more concerned about the DCI making arbitrary statements about the banned list to justify their decisions.
This is the biggest load of bull I've seen in a long time. What you built and tested and draw conclusions from in your article would not 'actually be good in Legacy.' What I've said all along is that makes the exercise a waste of time because it proves nothing (except that a deck with 4 Chrome Mox, 4 Mox Diamonds, 4 Land Tax, and 4 Scroll Rack is probably not the way to build a deck). You write off clear examples of places where Land Tax would be good as violating 'fundamental rules of deck design' and that's the weakest argument ever. A deck with Tundra, Land Tax, and Daze is fundamentaly bad?!?!? Explain to me how Belcher deals with turn 1 facing Mox Diamond, Land Tax, Sphere of Resistance - You might never activate Land Tax, but Belcher might never play a spell. But that's somehow inherently bad? I don't buy it.
This is a moot point. Wait until they unban it like I said before. That's how you get the most eyes on it. Forsythe has said they don't care if a pro-level event is dominated by a single card, though I'm neither convinced that they would unban it and if they did I doubt it would dominate an event. And, I still agree, it's not broken and could more than likely easily exist in this format (strong but not broken).
First, let me point out that I would never call what I'm looking at a 'Land Tax deck' since, as I have said before - the effect is not broken and does not warrant building around. I would look only at decks which include Land Tax in them for good effect.
With that said, I must be misunderstanding what you mean by a 'weak manabase'. You should need 8-10 White Sources to be able to consistently (~2/3 of the time) have a white mana available to play Turn 1 Land Tax. I think in terms of being able to activate Land Tax effectively, you want at least 3+ basics depending on a specific build. 2-mana lands would also have very good synergy with this strategy. With many Stax builds, it is not unusual to have 4-mana in play with only 2 lands on the board. Land Tax is perfect to take advantage of this since it will thin out 'extra' lands and naturally increase the threat density that you draw during the mid and late game. The number of actual 'dead cards' that you see is the deck building challenge. And I would not view using the full 8 available Moxen as a design requirement. You're right 1-for-2ing yourself with them will kill the deck's ability to do anything outside of the first few turns. As I have pointed out previously, if it's not 'broken', why build around it? All-in-all, I would find it easy to build a consistent mana base with ~12 basics, 8-10 white sources, and either Mox which I would believe should be the 'real' requirements for a deck using Land Tax.
I eliminate this requirement since I would not build a 'Land Tax deck'. The draw engine falls right into 'danger of cool things' territory for me. You will waste slots in the current enviroment to no effect. This is primarily what you have shown (and many of the decklists in the other thread will suffer from this). You are using 8-10 slots for a mini-combo that doesn't win the game. I think everyone on this site will agree that's bad deck design. Throw the restriction out and build a good deck that uses Land Tax to draw land, fix mana, and improve your draws. Again, it's not a 'broken' effect, so you will gain very little building solely around it.
Again, throw out the engine requirement and you free up slots to do this.
This is simply a ridiculous requirement. All decks will have some vulnerability to Force of Will and Duress. Trying to build a deck that is resilient to all forms of disruption is a futile exercise. Your deck should be able to 'bounce' back from that disruption, but you will never eliminate vulnerability to a Turn 1 Duress on the draw. And again, why look at a non-broken combo engine - look at decks that are built to specifically take advantage of what Land Tax does naturally.
There are many answers to combo in white and artifact alone that I think you could effectively build something that isn't 'irrelevant' or have something available post sideboard.
I think the biggest stumbling block is that you seem to be of the opinion that Land Tax must be built around or else it is bad. And I believe this is simply not true. Land Tax could be used in several decks to good effect. It may prove to be too ineffecient for inclusion, but I could see trying to use it in a Stax build, a Standstill deck, and even a Stasis deck (all oppressive decks it seems) none of which would necessarily need to use the 'draw engine'. You have done an outstanding job (as I've stated before) of showing how poor and cumbersome the Land Tax engine is. Why continue to make it a deck building requirement? By making it a requirement, you will continue to measure the engine's power level and not Land Tax's.
Fred Bear...
Fred Bear, you say that Land Tax cant be built around, which is true because the card is terrible. It wouldnt even serve a support role in any of those decks you stated because it sucks, but the fact that you cant build a deck around it that can even win a match proves its not banworthy, hell its not even playable, its white first of all, and second of all does nothing.
I dont know why people are jumping on Machinus for writing this, Forsythe EXPLICITLY stated Land Tax is broken on turn 1, which is obviously untrue, and which was refuted pretty well by the article. Everyone with a brain already knew Land Tax wasnt broken on turn 1 or any turn, but it was good to have it shown and published so that maybe WOTC will see it and take their thumbs out of their asses.
It's not "bull." Unless your metagame is "on the play vs. Belcher" then Sphere of Resistance is garbage. Try it sometime.
You conveniently overlook realistic estimates of tournament play because you have found one scenario where the card is good. As I said twice already, I can do that with any card. Pick the worst card you can think of and I can dream up a scenario where that card does something relevant for one turn.
What are those Orim's Chants and Sphere of Resistance's going to do against Goblins? How is that Crop Rotation against Threshold? What are you going to do when you are on the draw vs. any deck? How about not drawing your combo in the first place? All of these situations would happen constantly with the deck and put it in a very bad position. That is bad deck design.
It's not a point, so it can't be moot. It's one possibility of refuting my arguments. This whole discussion involves logical reasoning so it would help if you adopted that.
You can't use Land Tax and not build around it. If you build a deck with good cards and make good plays with them, Land Tax sucks. You have to make bad plays to make Land Tax good. If you dedicate your design to Land Tax then it's possible that all the bad plays will add up to something else, such as card advantage, but that requires a focused deck.
Making land drops and interacting with the opponent prevents you from using Land Tax in the first place. I suggest you read the development of White Control as it is chronicled on this website to get better evidence of why this is the case.
The weak manabase includes artifacts which are vulnerable to removal and which costs extra cards to use, as well as tension between basics and having the right kinds of mana to case whatever spells you are splashing for. This is a significant strain on the deck. Playing with 4 Chrome Mox 4 Mox Diamond eats up so many cards and at the same time reduces the amount of room you have to run off-color cards. But if you only run one of these accelerants, you are not going to get Land Tax going frequently enough and as I have already shown, a Land Tax deck that doesn't get to activate the card is just a deck full of bad cards.
Again, see White Control decks in this format to get an idea of what kind of requirements we are talking about.
See White Control.
See White Control.
This is the same problem as before with the manabase, except with your spells. If your Land Tax gets duressed, then what does the deck do exactly? It becomes a White Control deck with inferior cards. See White Control.
Then you haven't played Control in this format.
I can tell you from my experience that it is not playable in Stax. There are a lot of discussions on this site and others about different W/x control decks, and the difficulties they face. Land Tax only adds more restrictions and weakens the card quality of these decks.
Land Tax is an engine that requires you to convert tempo and resources into something useful. By itself, it doesn't do anything. In fact, it makes your position worse in a Control deck. If you just play normally, it doesn't do anything. If you invest mana and cards into it, it may yield some basic lands later in the game. That is the model of what an engine card is. In this case, even in the optimal scenarios where you draw resolve and active the combo, you get some basic lands in the mid-game. How is this good, and why do you think such a weak effect justifies these serious tempo investments when many other decks eschew clearly stronger investments because of the severe limitations on tempo development in this format? Are you really trying to tell me that Land Tax is better than Fact or Fiction (which gets close to zero play)?
There are a lot of players that have been working on W/x Control decks since the beginning of the format. These decks still suffer from serious problems, but there has been quite a lot of experimentation and testing in that time, and it is reasonable to think that all of that work has made these decks better, not worse. The defining characteristics of competent control decks in this format are versatility and tempo generation. Land Tax fails painfully at both of these and in doing so goes against all of the design trends that have ever caused success with these decks.
Land Tax is a conditional card that is useless in some situations, and weak in many others. Additionally, it is a large drain on resources to convert the benefits into something relevant. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to start talking about just "throwing it in" another deck with White, since the very thing that would allow that deck to succeed is the versatility of it's cards and the absolute minimum of tempo investment it has to make to get to the late game.
Maybe you're not familiar with Stax, Fred. I've tried to tinker with a list as you suggest. The problem is that Stax already has to devote a huge number of cards to setting up a lock that doesn't affect board position. When you add eight cards that do nothing except draw more Trinisphers and mana sources and Land Taxes. Everytime I played with this build I wished like Hell that those Land Taxes were just Armageddon/Ravages of War. To give you an idea of how bad LandStax is, I lost to Oppression.deck on MWS. That is to say, I got Trinisphere and jazz down, I got Land Tax activate, I thinned out all my lands, and I lost very rapidly to a single Phyrexian Negator, his first threat of the game, which he was happy to pay 4 for to attack each time. Let me repeat; Oppression.dec with a turn 7 Negator beats the deck you're talking about.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I think the article makes sense in regards to showing that a turn one land tax is not broken, when compared to the current decks to beat, regardless of the build.
I agree that land tax could be unbanned and see what happens. I for some reason doubt that people will remove thier sinkholes from decks for something else to play around land tax. But I digress, sinkhole is a fair card at best.
I just want to say, when it comes to the banned list, at least this article got people talking about why it sits on the banned list and why there should be some consideration to remove it, and the same reasoning goes for other cards.
Currently playing Legacy @ Stillpoint Comics, Somerset MA.
Look, I've never claimed to be God's gift to deck design - there are probably millions better than I (I'm sure IBA's LandStax deck is the most optimum list that could be built - sarcasm intended). But one thing I've learned through years of experience is that you can and should question anything and everything when faced with a problem, especially the 'givens'. When the answer comes back - "That's the way it's done." or "That's the only way to do it." - you usually know that the problem is not being fully investigated.
That's the problem here. I suggest a scenario and you refute it because it's bad deck design, even though there's no deck to evaluate. You say it utilizes narrow cards and can't win - period, even though the scenario would be rough for any deck it would hypothetically face. You claim that I ignore tournament play, yet I never suggested the deck I was playing against in the original scenario. My entire argument was based upon thinking outside of the current meta and looking explicitly at what Land Tax could do (which is why I left is truly open-ended), but you seem to refuse to try this analysis because it's 'bad deck design' and doesn't utilize 'good' cards within the accepted Legacy meta.
All of your claims rest solely on building and playing with Land Tax within the current 'rules' for deck building and play. Why? I'm not making any claim that those 'rules' are invalid in a meta with Land Tax legal, but why must they be? There are a lot of cards that would/could have synergy with Land Tax, but you are right - you might have to modify the way you play to take advantage of it (i.e. missing a land drop may actually be the right play). I fail to see why this is inherently bad, unless you are constrained by the current 'rules' which may or may not be valid if someone does create a deck that changes those rules. And that could be the outcome if someone came up with a solid deck utilizing Land Tax synergies. Aren't those the powerful interactions we look to exploit as deckbuilders?
My problem with your article from the beginning has been the way you tested. I problem solve for a living (an engineering geek - that's me) and when you test a hypothesis versus your null hypothesis, there are typically three causes for variation - random variation, testing bias, or actual variation. From what you tested and presented in your article (Null Hypothesis = Land Tax is powerful and oppressive, Hypothesis = Land Tax is weak-to-unplayable), your conclusions are clearly the result of testing bias as your intial assumptions lead necessarily to your conclusions. You very elegantly showed, though, that if you try to efficiently utilize the traditional Land Tax/Scroll Rack engine while maxing out your artifact mana slots in today's meta, you are probably wasting your time. This definitely makes what Forsythe has presented counterintuitive and it would require him to show more data or present better argument. As far as I can tell, that's all you did.
I commend you for writing an article and putting yourself out there. I do not mean to criticize you as a person, but I feel that's the way the argument is coming back to me. Again, I'm no Flores or Chapin (or even an Elgin or Coppola - just joking), I just fail to see why 'bad' cards can't be good if the right interaction is found to use them.
Fred Bear...
Some of what you are saying is true of deck design. But these possibilities have been limited and reduced continuously since competitive tournaments have been held, and the format isn't completely wide open anymore. In fact, deckbuilding in this format is really challenging. If it was possible to win with cards that have as many problems as Land Tax does, people would have done it already.
And I'm not even talking about the people on this site, I mean pros, who play magic for a living and came up against the same tempo wall. Of course I can't prove Land Tax is bad. You can't prove that any unplayed card is bad. If you want to get better as a magic player you have to differentiate between hope and winning tournaments, and this doesn't come about because someone wrote a formula that absolutely proves something. It's based on the assumption that everyone wants to win the tournament and that they will use their best ideas towards that end. After a long time of accumulated development we can clearly see what this format is like, and no amount of speculation or pipe dreaming is suddenly going to open up the possibility that conditional, expensive cards can become good. It that was at all likely it would have already happened with different cards, so there's no good reason to take it seriously.
In intelligent society, throwing out random snipes and appending that you're "just kidding" or "no offense meant" doesn't actually enable you to say whatever you want without repercussions.
Fred, in your effort to be open-minded, you neglect to consider how fundamentally asinine your argument is. Here's the fundamental problem:
Chris' position is falsifiable. He put forward a reasonable hypothesis (Land Tax is bad, or at best irrelevant for the early to midgame) based on testing.
Your position isn't. You assert that through magic, voodoo, willpower and the allignment of the stars a super secret Land Tax list that doesn't suck might exist somewhere and that it could be relevant. When asked to present any evidence for your claim, you balk, because you have no such list.
Chris' position could be disproven at any time if anyone actually came up with an even competitive- not broken, just competitive- Land Tax list. No one has. Instead, a few people such as yourself have resorted to appeals to mystic or divine intervention. Your argument is useless and can be discounted out of hand. Until you have an actual counter-argument, you would do better to drop the issue.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Actually, my only claim is that the issue deserves further testing. I don't understand why that's so hard to see. I've clearly stated why I don't think his conclusion is necessarily true. And the answer, as far as I understand it, is that basically, 'all other Land Tax decks do or will suck because Land Tax sucks.' Not exactly the type of explanation that 'intelligent society' can really use.
I've openly said that I have no list so you can criticize me for that all you want, I won't feel bad (and I hope it makes you feel better). I've stated clearly (and it follows from good problem solving technique) that the way to prove the Null Hypothesis, which is "Land Tax is powerful enough to remain banned", is wrong would be to clearly demonstrate that all decks utilizing 'powerful' Land Tax interactions are irrelevant to the format. That's not at all what's been done.
If you want to cut on me and others for not getting in line immediately, have at it. You want to say I'm wishing and hoping and praying, go ahead. I, as I have said before, agree that Land Tax is not broken and is probably not powerful enough to deserve banning. I just don't think it's been proven sufficiently yet.
But you are right, it's not worth trying to discuss it if you're only intention is to throw stones.
Fred Bear...
Point of order: I did not intentionally misunderstand you, I intentionally did not waste much time thinking about your post (thereby increasing the chances of misunderstanding). A subtle difference, easily overlooked by the untrained eye!
Land Tax is probably fine.
Random side note: appealing to a format that's been dead for almost 3 years and doesn't really resemble Legacy is about as useless as comparing Legacy to, say, Extended or Vintage. I am shocked - SHOCKED! - that Land Tax wasn't good in a format with Mana Drain and Skullclamp and so on!
That's not how things work, Matt. We can posture as if gravity is real and the Earth is round because all the scientific evidence supports these theories, and the counterproofs that would disprove them have been known and undiscovered for quite a long time. There is sufficient reason to believe that Land Tax sucks, and such a complete lack of counterproofs, that it's reasonable to assume that it does suck until proven otherwise.
And most cards that are clearly dominant in Legacy now were at least marginally played in 1.5, with the exception of storm cards due to all the fast mana being banned. While it not seeing any play then isn't necessarily proof of a card being bad, I think it's a fair proof that it's not broken.
That's because it's functionally impossible. It would take far too much time and effort to thoroughly test every possible build of every possible strategy that might attempt to use Land Tax, and even if it was done you wouldn't be able to clearly state that "no remaining viable Land Tax strategies exist", because people like you would come out of the woodwork to say that some strategies that obviously suck might really be good or that some strategies not yet discovered may exist. Chris' claim, on the other hand, is fairly easy to debunk if false; all you have to do is make or find one Land Tax list that doesn't suck.
Translation: "What? You're not allowed to call me out on my transparently hostile asides. That hurts my feelings."But you are right, it's not worth trying to discuss it if you're only intention is to throw stones.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
What the fuck? It wasn't based at all on testing. It was purely theoretical. That's the biggest issue people are having with the article.
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Machinus: Land Tax is probably pretty bad.
People: Yeah, but you might want to at least create lists and stuff instead of just theorize about it.
Machinus: No, you do it.
People: uhh...
Other people: Daze ftw! Prison components! Other things!
Machinus: Those are all pretty bad.
frogboy: if they're bad, why didn't you just put those lists into your article and test them to show the DCI that Land Tax is in fact pretty tame as opposed to just waving your hand and saying the card is bad?
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
Because the card IS bad, you dont need lists and testing to see that a white (LOL) enchantment that gets 3 blanks from your deck into your hand (SOMETIMES) is just God-awful. The type of people who actually think Land Tax is broken (or even powerful) probably wouldnt listen to testing results anyways...
If this is your stance, then the argument is pure rhetoric. In this problem, the Null Hypothesis has to be set as "Land Tax is powerful enough to remain banned" or something similar. The goal is to nullify or disprove that Hypothesis with testing, data, and statistics. The burden falls squarely on the shoulders of the group requesting the change to show that the change is warranted. This is the level of responsibility that is expected in most real world applications, why should this be any different?
You do make an excellent point, however, it would take time and much effort to do a thorough job of this. But that doesn't mean that this isn't what needs to be done. The job isn't quite as unlimited as you make it sound either. We can start by setting clear criteria for testing - define what the powerful/good interactions are, choose a percentage of possibility below which we feel is irrelevant, examine situations where not playing land is 'good', etc. If someone raises a question or another scenario, test it if it meets the criteria for testing (relevant occurance level, oppressive nature, good if you don't play land, whatever criteria is set), it will only make the case stronger if we consider more possibilities and the more eyes looking for test cases, the better.
I would really expect that if this procedure was followed and results were presented - Forsythe and the DCI would listen. If not, then further discussion of Land Tax and the banned list in general is reduced to mental masturbation.
Fred Bear...
Some might argue that the burden of proof lies on the folks who banned it to begin with. Machinus has begun to demonstrate that Forsythe's point of "miss my land drop go" is a fallacious arguement, but I want to see him go farther.The burden falls squarely on the shoulders of the group requesting the change to show that the change is warranted. This is the level of responsibility that is expected in most real world applications, why should this be any different?
And before you ask, the reason I'm not doing it myself is that I'm lazy and apathetic.
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
Yes. Yes, it does.
The burden of proof should always fall on the party that would have the easiest time proving it's case. Arguing that when that party is the currently accepted argument, that it doesn't need to prove anything because the other side is advocating change is basically an appeal to tradition. It's ironic that claim a desire for objectivity when what you really want is to grossly tilt the scales and set the bar of proof for demonstrating Land Tax's suckiness ludicrously high; there are quite a number of reasons to believe Land Tax is a weak card, but so far the only reason presented why it might be good is that it's banned, a fact which has been true of quite a number of cards, ranging from Juggernaut to Lin Sivvi to Recall to Doomsday.
To reiterate:
Side 1 of a question needs to expend hundreds or thousands of man hours to come up with a body of evidence that side 2 might, might consider as a reasonable bit of evidence for an argument.
Side 2 of a question needs to spend half an hour cobbling together something resembling a vaguely tenable Legacy deck to prove it's point.
You can see at once, with even a fraction of common sense, which side ought to be expected to prove it's case.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
nitpick: it's usually because things tend to be the way they are for a reason, and changing them would require a better reason.Arguing that when that party is the currently accepted argument, that it doesn't need to prove anything because the other side is advocating change is basically an appeal to tradition.
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
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